Ethonal: Ethanol Terrible Investment

Remember just a couple years ago when everyone was asking if ethanol was a risky investment? Well, we've got that answer in spades, as company after company falters and most companies with their primary focus on ethanol teetering on the brink of bankruptcy or already in it.

Even giant Archer Daniels Midland got clobbered with huge losses, even though they performed well in other areas to enjoy one of the few profitable quarters among that sector. That was in spite of their investment in ethanol and the ethanol industry, not because of it.

Anyone who has invested in ethanol stock is sorry they did it, along with ethanol companies created to benefit off the back of taxpayers funding. The flex fuel is a disaster, and whether someone worships at the altar of renewable fuels or not, they have to admit the future is not only grim, but impossible to successfully navigate if ethanol - whether it's corn based or cellulosic - is the source looked for in the renewable fuels sector.

Not only is ethanol have huge inputs that affect the environment, but as an alternative fuel is a disaster, with a number of studies showing it's going to cost far more per gallon than gasoline, than originally expected.

There really is no market for ethanol, and as far as small engine power equipment goes, it continues to damage them, even though those trying to force the ethanol industry on the rest of us aren't willing to admit it, even though manufacturers and small engine repair shops continue to say they're filled with snowmobiles, generators, chainsaws, and other small engine equipment using ethanol as part of their fuel.

When you also consider the mulit-millions used to build ethanol plants and artificially create ethanol producers, you see that taxpayer money could have been used for something much better than this misguided fiasco.

Add the current economic problems to the mix and it's even a great disaster. Ethanol plant construction is largely on hold; you can't send it through pipelines to get it cheaply to where it is needed; and in the name of the dubious idea of generating jobs build upon an illusion is worse than not doing it in the first place.

Producing ethanol as far as all costs concerned was vastly underrated, and the effect of using so much acreage to grow corn on the artificial prices that couldn't hold up, caused food prices to surge and riots around the world as people struggled to survive because of corn being used to feed the environmental nuts dream of nirvana rather than people.

So now most ethanol companies are a disaster; ethanol stocks have plummeted; ethanol as an investment is ridiculous; and it damages small engines and even some cars using e85 in their vehicles. And we're obsessed with ethenol why? Because people are trying to get the public eye off the billions of barrels of oil on American land and off its coastlines. They're pretending we've entered into a crisis period when in fact billions of barrels of oil are available for consumption.

No matter how the ethanol marketing campaign is arranged, you can't hide the horrid idea it has become, nor the huge, negative impact its having all around. Many original ethanol proponents have change their minds about its viability as a biofuel because of its challenges that aren't able to be solved.

Every aspect of it has failed, and yet because of the powerful farm lobby, which has nothing to do with small farmers but rather billion dollar companies getting tax breaks to pursue the stupid idea, we continue to waste huge amounts of money and time for something doomed to fail.

The ethanol industry is dead on arrival. Let's just admit it, start to open up our land and coastlines to the hundreds of billion of barrels of oil available, and then slowly look for real, viable alternatives.

The fear generated from marketing ethanol that we are somehow some type of dire need to find alternative fuels is an outright lie. The results of the debacle show that fear-induced initiatives never work, as it isn't thought through, but enacted for political expediency.

Ethanol is a poor and misguided investment of time and money. We need to move on, knowing we aren't in a hurry, and there's plenty of oil for decades to come we can access and produce instead of investing in the losing ethanol industry.